On Monday evening I helped judge district band auditions.  So I guess I've officially made it to the other side of the music ed world.  I judged middle school double reeds and low winds.  Most of them did pretty well, but still listening to a sixth grade oboe player can be a challenge.  The best student was an eighth grade oboe player who was amazing.  I stopped judging her and sat there and listened to her play.  My first question was "where do you get your reeds?" and when she answered that her teacher made them, it all made sense.  I gave her a near perfect score.  Anyway, now my name it known among the music teachers around here and I even got an email from the coordinator saying how wonderfully helpful my comments were. 

IT SNOWED (finally). We got about 2-4 inches last night and had a high temperature of about 18 today.  I went to get into my car and couldn't get the windshield wipers to unfreeze from the windshield.  The buick would never survive up here!  So today was really pretty.  Also I bought my skies today (I'm really excited) so next friday I can go skiing!  We will have to see what the skiing to falling ratio will be.  It was really confusing to buy skies because there is only about a million ski shops here and I had no idea what I was looking at.  There was a very nice man in one of the ski shops who took the time to explain everything to me slowly and I was really grateful.  I ended up buying skies that will last me for probably the next 10 years of Vermont living much less more southern states.  So I felt that I got good quality skies for the low price I paid.  So now I have to job of convincing my friends into some free ski lessons:) 

Work Stories

Work has gone through a lot of changes.  The month of October was crazy busy.  We had way more customers then we could possibily handle.  There were bus loads of brittish, older people and even one of mennonites from Lanchaster.  Everyone wanted to come to the picturistic new england town with all the pretty leafs.   And then just as suddenly as it all started, it all calmed down.  We would get a lunch rush and busy Saturdays, but nothing out of control.   And thanksgiving was all about orders.  People could order a full thanksgiving diner from us and many did.  My highest sale to that day was 144.00. That day I did about 10-15 sales over 100 dollars.  And the highest was sold to a lady who sent her housekeeper to pick up her order of 570.00 dollars worth of Thanksgiving food.  That was fun.   This week started a new phase.  Being completely dead.  Lets just say the store is completely clean and my spanish has much improved and I've read a bunch of physics and do the sodoku...  I think it will pick up when it snows.  I just heard on npr that this novemeber is in the top three for warmest in the past 100+ years.  The ski resort has opened but it is sketchy at best but it is going to cool down this weekend.  I will probably get a lot of catering jobs coming up.  It will be interesting to go to the Christmas parties of the rich and famous.  But in the mean time I'm just trying to survive each dead hour at work.

Kitty Stories

My kitty is growing.  If you haven't met her yet check out my pictures and videos on this site.   Although she is bigger she really hasn't calmed down very much, I still make sure I am always armed with the water spray bottle incase she has trouble keeping her mouth under control.  She does a cool trick that if I'm sitting on the floor she will run and take a flying leap at me and expect me to catch her, then she runs back and does it again.  Her couriousity has gotten her in trouble lately.  She thought it was fun to jump into the refrigerater every time I open the door.  This usually works because I don't keep much food in there since I eat most of my meals at work.  But this time she blindly jumped into the refrigerater and landed in a bowl of almost jelled green jello.  She wasn't happy. Her paws had a green tent to them for a while and she hasn't jumped in the refrigerater since then.  Another time she was standing on the edge of the bathtub and watching the shower water go down the drain.  She then decided to put her front paws down unto the moving water (about 3 inches of it) and then she froze.  She was stuck with her front paws in the water and her hind-end up in the air against the tub.  There was no backing up.  As I stood there and laughed at her she had to quick jump into the water and then ran away to lick her soaked self dry. 

So we had a bus (or 70) of brits come through today.  Resulting in the following exchange (which is more amusing if read outloud to yourself in an english accent)

Brit: Did you remember the coffee?

Me (in an equal english accent without realizing it): oh, i'm terribly sorry, I forgot all about it.

yeah, I'm from VA.